Strawbridge v. Curtiss
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Strawbridge v. Curtiss'', 7 U.S. (3 Cranch) 267 (1806), was a case in which the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
first addressed the question of complete diversity for
diversity jurisdiction In the law of the United States, diversity jurisdiction is a form of subject-matter jurisdiction that gives United States federal courts, U.S. federal courts the power to hear lawsuits that do not involve a federal question jurisdiction, federal ...
. In a 158-word opinion the Court held that for federal diversity jurisdiction, under section 11 of the
Judiciary Act of 1789 The Judiciary Act of 1789 (ch. 20, ) was a United States federal statute enacted on September 24, 1789, during the first session of the First United States Congress. It established the federal judiciary of the United States. Article III, Secti ...
, no party on one side of a suit may be a citizen of the same state as any party on the other side. Therefore, when there are joint
plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the p ...
s or
defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
s, jurisdiction must be established as to each party. That requirement remains acceptable in law as a matter of
statutory interpretation Statutory interpretation is the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and a straightforward meani ...
, not constitutional command.''State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Tashire'', 386 U.S. 523, 530–31 (1967), saying of ''Strawbridge'', “Chief Justice Marshall there purported to construe only ‘The words of the act of Congress,’ not the Constitution itself. And in a variety of contexts this Court and the lower courts have concluded that Article III poses no obstacle to the legislative extension of federal jurisdiction, founded on diversity, so long as any two adverse parties are not co-citizens.”


See also

*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 7 This is a list of cases reported in volume 7 (3 Cranch) of ''United States Reports'', decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1805 and 1806. Nominative reports In 1874, the U.S. government created the ''United States Reports'' ...


References


External links

* United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Marshall Court Diversity jurisdiction case law 1806 in United States case law {{SCOTUS-stub